Manually removing docker images

Question

I have about 50 thousand images in my local ubuntu:

$ docker info Containers: 3 Images: 49708 Storage Driver: aufs Root Dir: /var/lib/docker/aufs Backing Filesystem: extfs Dirs: 49714 

docker rmi -f $(docker images | grep "something" | awk "{print \$3}")

Accepts 100% processor and runs too slow. Is there a quick way to delete most of the images?

Answer 1

So, answering my own question, there is a script in the docker contrib directory: https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/620339f166984540f15aadef2348646eee9a5b42/contrib/nuke-graph-directory.sh

Running with sudo deleted all my images, just restart the docker daemon and you're good to go.

Answer 2

It seems you need to clear /var/lib/docker/aufs . I did not do this, and it is probably unsafe.

But first try using these aliases written by ndk :

 # Kill all running containers. alias dockerkillall='docker kill $(docker ps -q)' # Delete all stopped containers. alias dockercleanc='printf "\n>>> Deleting stopped containers\n\n" && docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)' # Delete all untagged images. alias dockercleani='printf "\n>>> Deleting untagged images\n\n" && docker rmi $(docker images -q -f dangling=true)' # Delete all stopped containers and untagged images. alias dockerclean='dockercleanc || true && dockercleani' # Delete all alias dockercleanup='dockerkillall || true && dockercleanc || true && dockercleani' 

UPD: Since the publication of this answer, several new manual cleaning methods have been introduced. I allow myself to cite the GitHub user code adamhadani ( docker-py required):

 #!/usr/bin/env python """ Check all existing Docker containers for their mapped paths, and then purge any zombie directories in docker volumes directory which don't correspond to an existing container. """ import logging import os import sys from shutil import rmtree import docker DOCKER_VOLUMES_DIR = "/var/lib/docker/vfs/dir" def get_immediate_subdirectories(a_dir): return [os.path.join(a_dir, name) for name in os.listdir(a_dir) if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(a_dir, name))] def main(): logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO) client = docker.Client() valid_dirs = [] for container in client.containers(all=True): volumes = client.inspect_container(container['Id'])['Volumes'] if not volumes: continue for _, real_path in volumes.iteritems(): if real_path.startswith(DOCKER_VOLUMES_DIR): valid_dirs.append(real_path) all_dirs = get_immediate_subdirectories(DOCKER_VOLUMES_DIR) invalid_dirs = set(all_dirs).difference(valid_dirs) logging.info("Purging %s dangling Docker volumes out of %s total volumes found.", len(invalid_dirs), len(all_dirs)) for invalid_dir in invalid_dirs: logging.info("Purging directory: %s", invalid_dir) rmtree(invalid_dir) logging.info("All done.") if __name__ == "__main__": sys.exit(main())